Owners of buildings with rooftop clubs that overlook Wrigley Field say planned outfield video boards would block views and could lead them into bankruptcy. / Brett T. Roseman for USA TODAY Sports

by Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Sports

by Bob Nightengale, USA TODAY Sports

CHICAGO - Wrigleyville is the most famous neighborhood in baseball, where gang-infested houses have become multimillion-dollar enterprises and a ballclub that stinks on the field continues to be a force at the cash register.

It also has been a peaceful neighborhood with a family atmosphere, a setting fostered by a cooperative relationship between its most notorious tenant - the Chicago Cubs - and the area's residents.

But these days, balls and strikes are taking a back seat to beefs and strife. The Cubs want to renovate 99-year-old Wrigley Field and remake the neighborhood. They'll pay the $500 million price tag, unlike many pro sports teams looking for a home improvement, but the neighbors are leery of a 6,000-square-foot video board in left field and a 1,000-foot advertising sign in right, let alone a new hotel and more night games.

"We live here, this is our neighborhood," said Beth Murphy, a Wrigleyville resident since 1979 and owner of the famous bar Murphy's Bleachers, on the corner of Sheffield and Waveland. "This isn't Disneyland, or a place where people just come and go. People have invested their time and money to make it what it is.

"Wrigley is a neighbor. And a big neighbor. But he's just part of the neighborhood. Wrigley doesn't run our neighborhood. People need to understand that."

The Cubs say the neighbors need to understand they are great for business and if they aren't wanted in Wrigleyville, suburbs such as Rosemont and Cicero will take them.

"Our goal since the day we bought the team was to preserve, improve and restore Wrigley," Cubs owner Tom Ricketts told USA TODAY Sports. "The plan we have right now will do that. We just want to bring Wrigley into the 21st century from a fan-amenity side. We want more flexibility. We want to be able to generate revenue anyway we want in our park. We want to run it like a business and not a museum.

"We do respect the fact that it's in a neighborhood and we have people that live here. We want to do what makes sense for our team and the neighborhood. In the end, we believe this will work and it will be done."

The team filed its proposal with the city of Chicago on May 1. It must be approved by the City Council, although it is supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.

The Cubs are indeed big business for Chicago. They draw 3 million fans a year with an annual economic impact of $600 million to the state, according to several studies. The rooftop that Murphy and her late husband, Jim, bought for $36,000 in 1980 is worth nearly $5 million. The Lakeview Baseball Club rooftop a few doors down sold for $4.8 million in 2011 in bankruptcy court.

But Ricketts has been rebuilding the Cubs on the field and in the front office since buying the team for $845 million in 2009, and now focus turns to Wrigley Field and creating more revenue for the team.

In addition to the video board in left field and the advertising sign in right that could be worth $20 million a year, the Cubs want approval to play 40 night games a season (instead of 30) and build an open-air plaza and office building with retail space.

The neighbors, already upset with the lack of parking on game days, are conflicted.

They packed the 23rd District Police Station on Tuesday night and bemoaned the drunks who urinate on their lawns but got excited about a new hotel that would increase their property value.

The rooftop owners are incensed the signage would block their direct views of the field and could bankrupt them. They cite a 20-year agreement signed with the team in 2004 to provide the Cubs 17% of their gross sales ($4.07 million last season).

Ricketts has said the impact on the rooftoop views will not be significant. "We have to do what's right for the team first and make sure it aligns with the rooftops second. They're just the opposite," he said.

But would the Cubs, whose frustration with the process grows each day, really move to the suburbs if a deal isn't reached? Ricketts told news reporters last week, "We'll have to take a look at moving - no question."

When asked by USA TODAY Sports, he said, "The context of the question was, 'What if you can't get signage in the outfield?' The obvious answer at that point was, 'You have to look at other options.' It was slightly different than the way I had answered the questions in the past, so because I answered it a little differently, everyone's like, 'Well, you're threatening us.'

"It's not about threats. It's about making sure we get this project started. We're taking the high ground."

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'DOUBLE-EDGE SWORD'

The debate around Wrigley Field is heated, and it has nothing to do with a team on its way to a fourth consecutive fifth-place finish.

Bob Price and Craig Anderson sat on their patio on Waveland Avenue on Tuesday night as fans walked by to see the Cubs take on the St. Louis Cardinals. An hour later, their neighbors filled the police station meeting with insults and distrust.

"It's the only place in America we could do this," Anderson says. "If the Cubs weren't here, why be here?"

Just around the corner on Seminary Avenue, Dick Meyers and his girlfriend, Dee Davis, were climbing aboard their bicycles at Kelly Park. Davis has lived here for 17 years and has seen neighbors come and go. Sorry, she can't get worked up if the big neighbor down the street leaves.

"The truth is, the longer the Cubs are bad, it's really good for us," says Davis, 66. "When October comes and they're no longer playing baseball, it's beautiful here."

But Murphy, the Murphy's Bleachers owner, watched patrons jam the inside of her bar and didn't even want to think about how business would be without the Cubs.

"I wish they'd spend this kind of time and resources on the field instead of worrying about all of this," says Murphy, spokeswoman for the 16 rooftops beyond the outfield walls. "If the Cubs were winning, everybody would be happy. All of this would be going away."

The Cubs, with a front office led by Theo Epstein, plan to be competitive in two years. In the meantime, the game results are almost meaningless and the rooftops have become an alternative for the casual fan. Why pay $57 for field box seats when you can shell out a few extra bucks for a rooftop view and consume as much beer and food as you want?

"I love the rooftops," Ricketts said, "but they are direct competition. That hurts the team. It also makes it worse when there's a lot of discounting going on and depressing prices, which they should be thoughtful about, because it's a double-edged sword."

There were sections of empty seats Monday for the Cubs' makeup game against the Texas Rangers, but the bar was packed at an upscale rooftop on Sheffield. People were watching the Chicago Bulls on TV, screaming and high-fiving as the seconds ticked down in their upset win against the Miami Heat in the NBA playoffs.

These patrons might have paid $70-$150 for their rooftop view, but they still preferred watching the Bulls on plasma TVs than the Cubs in person.

"When you can watch the Bulls beat the Heat, who cares about the Cubs?" said David Martinez, 27, planted in front of a TV.

Said Murphy: "I love the Cubs, and I'd rather be inside watching the game, but they have to give you something to watch. The Cubs haven't been good since Ricketts bought the team."

And the last time they were great was 1908, when they last won a World Series. "We plan to change that, and we will," Ricketts said. "We just need some help."

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CATHEDRAL OR DUMP?

Ricketts, who met his wife of 19 years in the Wrigley Field bleachers and persuaded his father to buy the team while watching a game from a rooftop, sat in a warehouse across the street from Wrigley on Tuesday.

This is where the Cubs moved their offices a year ago, tired of the cramped quarters at Wrigley Field, including trailers.

Some call Wrigley Field a cathedral, including Chris Berblinger and Dino Murabito, power-plant operators from St. Louis who came to see the Cardinals play. Others, such as former Chicago White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen and Rangers DH Lance Berkman, say it's a dump.

The clubhouses are tiny, with manager Dale Sveum holding his postgame news conferences in an old storage closet. There are eight shower heads for the entire team. The weight room is smaller than an elementary school classroom. The lone indoor batting cage is across the outfield.

And if you miss only one inning standing in line for the bathroom, it means there must have been a few pitching changes to slow the game. These issues, though, would be addressed in the proposed renovation.

The person who might have the biggest say on whether Ricketts and Cubs get what they want is Tom Tunney, the 44th Ward alderman. And, like many of his constituents, he is conflicted.

"This is a very polarizing issue for our community," Tunney told USA TODAY Sports after Tuesday's 2 1/2-hour meeting at the police station. "I'm between a rock and a hard place. This ranks right up there when the state Supreme Court had to step in and Wrigley had lights for the first time.

"I really can't tell you what's going to happen. We want them to stay. We want them to be good neighbors. And being good neighbors is to have some responsibility to their fans, right?"

Anderson, the Waveland Avenue resident, agrees and offers a simple request: "The Cubs owe it to their fans to preserve this ballpark. But we need it to be more like Augusta and not like NASCAR."

And who was in attendance for Tuesday's game? NASCAR driver Kyle Busch. He was watching from a right-field rooftop.